


future changing colours

by younglegends



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 02:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: The summer was over.Or: Three scenes, after.





	future changing colours

**Author's Note:**

> i really need to stop beginning all my documents with "i'm literally not going to write fic, BUT..."

The summer was over and school started up again like clockwork. Max biked to school with the others now that she didn’t have a ride, and the whole thing became a bit of a routine, wheeling her bike out onto the street early in the cool air of morning, her spinning spokes the only sound all down the street. Off to Lucas first, because he lived the closest; then Dustin; then Mike. It felt good, being the one to start off the whole chain, like she was responsible for getting the day started, like it was important. With two of their party gone sometimes Max felt like a bad replacement; she wasn’t their best friend Will, wasn’t Mike’s girlfriend El. Was a tagalong washed up from California and a _girl_ besides, though she’d kill them if they said it. They didn’t. Maybe because they knew she would; maybe because they forgot.

Sometimes Max forgot too, because California was such a dream it hardly felt real anymore, and seemed instead a fantasy world she had made up in her head, like in one of their games. California where the sun never set, California where the sky met the sea, California sand in your hair and California smoke in your lungs. In Hawkins the autumn chill was beginning to set in, the leaves turning crisp and copper on the trees; in Hawkins the woods were evergreen and had no end. Hawkins had a way of taking you over, she knew that now. Something in its bones, buried under the earth, tangled up in the roots of trees. It had taken Billy and it was taking her too, molding her into something new, hard and tough and afraid.

Lucas was waiting for her by his front lawn with his bike propped up with one hand and his walkie-talkie held in the other. “You’re late,” he hollered before Max had even pedaled all the way up the hill, “why’s Dustin chewing _me_ out? It’s not even my fault.”

“Tell Dustin to chew on this,” Max shouted back, flipping him the bird. Lucas made a face and stowed his walkie-talkie into his backpack. He clambered onto his bike, then made another face as Max pulled up in front of his house; this one Max didn’t recognize. It was all screwed up like he was squinting at her.

“Uh, Max, are you sick or something? You look all weird and sweaty and stuff.”

Lucas thought he was _so_ smooth, so cool. Kept trying to convince everyone his facial hair was growing in. (“I think that’s a wart,” Dustin said helpfully, “my mom’s got a cream for that if you need.” Max was still cracking up over that one.) But he was just as much of a stupid kid as he’d always been. So was Max, who resisted the urge to stamp her foot; she’d probably fall off her bike.

“Screw you, Lucas,” Max said instead, very maturely. “Gee, I _wonder_ why I’m sweaty biking up this stupid hill to get to _your_ house to pick you up instead of ditching your ass.”

“Okay, OKAY,” Lucas said over her before she was even finished, he could be so annoying sometimes. “Ugh, I’m sorry for being _concerned_ about you, okay?”

“OKAY,” Max said, but it wasn’t really okay. They pedaled without speaking for a few minutes. The morning was still so quiet; every once in a while a slow car would pass them by and leave behind an unsettled, creeping sort of silence. The wind whipped Max’s hair into her face, her mouth. She chewed on it furiously as she stared straight ahead, trying not to blink.

“I just wanted to know if something had happened,” Lucas said, the same time as Max said, “I didn’t really sleep all that well last night I _guess._ ”

Lucas braked to a stop. Max did the same, though she kept her eyes trained forward, not looking at him. “Oh,” Lucas said; she could feel him staring at her. “Uh, okay. Are you... Did something happen?”

It was Max’s turn to make a face. No, nothing had happened. What _could_ happen anymore? Her mom and Neil had gone to bed early and Max had stayed awake staring up at the ceiling trying not to think about how silent the house was. No squeal of tires pulling into the driveway, no muffled music blasting, no telltale creak of the window shoving open for someone to sneak back in the house after dark. No walls rattling, no doors slamming, no shouting and banging and nothing breaking. Just Max holding her breath in the hushed stillness, waiting. Like a bomb was about to go off, or else would never go off again, and she almost didn’t even know which was worse. 

“I just couldn’t sleep,” Max said. “No big deal, I was thinking a lot, that’s all. It’s fine.” 

“Uh, okay,” Lucas said in his odd voice; he sounded like he was constipated. Max hoped he wouldn’t ask _thinking about what?_ He didn’t. It must have been obvious anyway. Max was the only one with a dead brother after all. Stepbrother. It was funny—they’d given him a heroic death and everything, written about it in the papers; Billy’d have laughed his head off if he knew. Sometimes Max felt like laughing too. He wasn’t a hero, obviously. Did a lot of nasty and stupid and cruel shit. Did some things that weren’t that bad, too, but that was how it went for everyone. No one was really a monster; Max knew what the real monsters were. 

Max would keep his secret for him, though. She was getting better at that. 

“I get nightmares sometimes,” Lucas said. Max was surprised into looking at him. He was scratching at the back of his head and didn’t seem like he was making one of his stupid jokes. “I mean, they’re not too bad. I got used to them and everything. It was kind of hard at first but then Will told me he got them too, and Mike. Then it felt less like something that was happening to me, and more like something else we had to get through together. You know, like another monster to fight.”

He said it matter-of-factly like it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe he _was_ getting more smooth or serious or grown-up or whatever. Max felt kind of choked up in her throat. It wasn’t fair that Lucas dorkface Sinclair had to get used to his nightmares and El and Will had to move away from their friends because of all the fucked up shit that had happened to them and her stupid stepbrother died a hero according to the Hawkins Post but had never made it back home like he always said he would. Her eyes burned; it was the wind. That Hawkins chill. 

“Anyway you know that if you can’t sleep you can always reach me, right? I mean if you want, just ’cause I sleep with the walkie-talkie next to my bed anyway, in case Dustin gets into trouble or Mike has a dumb idea in the middle of the night, you know how they are.”

_They?_ Max was tempted to tease, because it was the funniest thing she’d heard all week. Like Lucas wasn’t just as bad as the rest of them. But he was getting a bit red in the face and it was kind of cute so she’d let him off the hook for now. “Yeah, I know.” She bit her lip. “The first thing, I mean.” And she did know. But it was just nice to be reminded sometimes.

“Yeah,” Lucas said, and they didn’t say anything else for a moment. But he was smiling a little. 

“Hey,” he said after a beat, like Max’s response had bolstered him. “You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Max said, giving a small half-shrug. “Not like anything can hurt me now.”

Lucas was still watching her. “Duh,” he said right away, “who’s gonna get on _your_ bad side,” but it sounded a little subdued. Like it wasn’t true; like he didn’t get it, not really. Sure, Lucas had grown up in Hawkins and watched it get turned upside down. He’d known what was really out there back when Max was still living in a dream in California, staying out past curfew just to piss off her parents, just because she could. But she was awake now and the monster was dead and her friends were alive. She was alive and nothing was gonna touch any of them ever again. Even if she stayed up all night waiting for it. Because Max knew what a lull meant: the ache of the bone that predicted rain, the calm before the storm. The shiver of anticipation for the violence that was sure to come. She could read the warning signs better than anybody and so she’d be prepared. That was the cost; _you always knew there was gonna be a cost,_ Billy used to sneer at her. But Billy wasn’t here anymore was he.

Anyway you had to be afraid in order to be brave. Max knew that, of course she knew that. It was just easy to forget sometimes. Less so when she was with her friends, though.

“Oh shit, we’re so late,” Lucas said, “I hope Dustin doesn’t chew us out.”

They pedaled on. Dustin totally chewed them out.

The city wasn’t so bad, just different. Just something else to get used to. “It’ll be like you’re moving up in the world,” Mike had said back then with a weird look in his eye, “you’re gonna meet so many new people and get too cool for Hawkins.” _For us,_ Will knew he was saying, like Mike hadn’t hit his growth spurt and started leaving his hair longer and didn’t have a _girlfriend_ already, he could be real stupid like that sometimes. So Will just said “I don’t know how that’s possible when you’re here making Hawkins a hundred times cooler just by being in it,” and then “I’m gonna miss you, too,” and Mike had laughed, a little sheepish, but also grateful, Will knew, that he didn’t have to say it first. Maybe that was what growing up was: always saying things sideways from what you really meant. It was okay. Will didn’t mind saying it for him; didn’t really want to grow up just yet, either. 

Mike had been wrong, anyway. If anything moving into a big city made Will less of an event and more of—whatever the opposite of that was. A person, he guessed. Here where they had traffic horns blaring all through rush hour, had taxicabs and cinemas and graffiti and whenever it rained the streets got all shiny and the puddles reflected technicolour and the air tasted a little metallic like a penny, no one called him Zombie Boy. Just _Byers_ or _William_ or sometimes nothing at all. He hadn’t made any real friends yet in school, and it almost relieved him in a way, that he didn’t have to tell anyone anything or _not_ tell them anything or compare them with Mike and Lucas and Dustin and what they had back home. What he still had. 

It didn’t stop Mom from worrying, though. He could tell whenever she asked “How was your day, honey” and Will said “Fine, we’re growing tomato plants in science class and I’ve got to read _Lord of the Flies_ for homework and what are we having for dinner tonight?” She was just waiting, he knew. Waiting for him to say “Can I go out with some classmates to see a movie” or “I got invited to a birthday party, will you help me pick out a present” or “I felt something on the back of my neck, it’s all happening again.” Sometimes when she looked at him he wondered if she saw the flicker in a string of Christmas lights. Or else Bob and Chief Hopper and the things that had killed them both. Or maybe she was just seeing him as he really was, skinny and lean-limbed and fourteen going on fifteen, even taller than her now and still growing, never slowing down.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Will had said to her once, quiet in the middle of the night, “it’s over,” and Mom just gave him a crooked smile and tucked his hair behind his ear, said _yeah, I know_ with a voice so sad like she didn’t believe it, not yet. 

And maybe deep down Will didn’t, either, though it got easier with every day. For the most part. Then sometimes he would be riding the subway with Jonathan and El, watching her watch the world running fast as a river out the windows, chewed bubblegum stuck under the seats and strangers shuffling in and out and the train car rattling like the ribcage of an old skeleton and she would look up, right at him, like he was really there, and then he would feel okay again.

El had her way of doing that; it wasn’t one of her powers, since she didn’t really have them anymore, as though taking her out of Hawkins really had left the magic behind. Will didn’t mind. Sure, it was cool when El could make people piss their pants or flip a van upside down or kill the monsters with her mind, but now El wore scrunchies in her hair and hogged the phone after dinner to call Mike or Max and every once in a while someone referred to her as _your sister_ and the two of them would share a little smile like a secret. El was learning, too; learning what pictures and posters to put up on her bedroom walls, learning the difference between _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek,_ learning how to swipe her ticket at the metro turnstiles and how to tell a good story and that you didn’t have to just listen to music, you could sing along with it too. Remembering to turn off a light after you’d switched it on and asking for help if you couldn’t reach something by yourself and saying _I_ when you wanted something. Will thought those things were important, too. Probably even more important. 

Anyhow they were going back to Hawkins for Christmas. It was still months away, but sometimes he dreamed about it. Riding up to the Wheelers’ front door on his bicycle through the snow and ringing the doorbell with a grin on his face and when Mike opened the door he stared at him wide-eyed and screamed— _IT’S THE MONSTER, THE MONSTER’S BACK!_ And sometimes Will saw his reflection in the window and he was the Mind Flayer; sometimes he saw his reflection in the window and he was only himself. Those times were the worst, because Mike wouldn’t stop screaming, and Will said _please, Mike it’s me, it’s still me,_ and Mike said _I KNOW_ and still ran away from him and then Will was screaming too and

“Will,” said El. She was in her pajamas and her hair was down and she was standing by his bed, staring at him. She hadn’t turned on the light so it was just her in the dark, and Will, and the sound of his panting, harsh and ragged and loud. She didn’t say anything else. Just watched him, as he sat up in his bed and wiped his sweaty hair out of his eyes and breathed. 

“El?” Will whispered. His lips were numb. His bedroom door was open; he could see Mom’s. It was closed. She was still asleep, then. That was good. Had he been making a noise? “Sorry, El, did I wake you up?”

El shook her head. “Can’t sleep,” she said, so soft Will had to strain his ears to pick it up. “Heard you.” She reached out, then, almost startling him, but he held still and she placed a hand on his forehead, the touch almost curious. “Heard your dream.”

“Sorry,” Will said. He swallowed. “Didn’t mean to.” To do what, he didn’t even know.

“I know,” El said. She took down her hand. It was hard to make out her expression in the darkness, but she sounded only half-awake. Will wondered how long she’d been having trouble sleeping. He wondered what her dreams looked like. 

“Mike is counting down to Christmas,” El told him. “He says there are still seventy-two days.” 

They’d had another hour-long phone conversation last night; Will had gotten to say like three sentences. “Yeah?”

“He is planning a surprise.” El paused. “Don’t say I said that.” 

Will almost laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

El nodded solemnly. “He says, everything is boring without you. He asks if you hang out with anyone cool.”

“What’d you say?”

“Yes,” El said, and pointed to herself. “Me.”

Will really did laugh this time; it hurt his throat a little. He could hear her smile in her voice. “Yeah, no one’s cooler than you.”

“He asks if you’re okay,” El said. The smile was gone. 

“I’m okay,” Will said.

El looked at him. “Friends don’t lie.” 

Will huffed another laugh. “Friends don’t lie,” he agreed. “I’m okay. Honest.”

It was true. Sure, he missed home, missed Mike and Lucas and Dustin reeling off obscure facts about radio waves and amphibian eating habits and time travel as seen in _Back to the Future,_ but home was still there and so were his friends. Sure, there were the dreams, but he’d always had the dreams, so it made sense that he still would, even here. Maybe the horror was something Will’d taken with him out of Hawkins; maybe it was inside him. There were a lot of undeterminable things inside of him, wild unspoken things he didn’t know the names for yet. He tended to them, a little like the plants he was growing for science class. He was waiting to see what they would become. 

El looked at him. She seemed to be thinking about it. She tugged at a hair tie around her wrist. 

“Okay,” El said. “Then me, too.”

They shared another one of their secret smiles. And maybe El couldn’t take down government agents and spies and Demogorgons anymore—not by herself, at least—but here with her in the dark, Will felt safe. They were only two of their party, but they weren’t alone. They could do this for each other. 

“Can’t sleep,” El said again, and hesitated; Will waited for her to find the words. “May I stay here?”

“Sure,” Will said. He got up out of bed to close his door and to dig out his flashlight from under the bed. “Hey, I just bought some X-Men comics. Wanna read them with me?” 

In the morning his mom found them like that, curled up on the floor and snoring, comic books fanned open around them and the flashlight battery long dead. It was time for breakfast, time to get ready for school and for work, but she stood there in the doorway and watched them for a moment. Five more minutes, then. She could give them just five more minutes, like this. 

Everything changed and nothing changed. Everything, like the dead leaves curling up at the ends of their branches and the autumn settling heavy over Hawkins like fog and the drawn lines of his face whenever he looked into the mirror, washed out in the absence of summer, in pale imitation of the golden season. And nothing, like the bell ringing on the door, the voices chattering a mile a minute, Robin’s call floating muffled from her spot behind the front counter: “hey _dingus,_ your children are here, _again!”_

“In a sec,” Steve yelled back. He gave himself another cursory squint in the mirror. Adjusted his hair, tugged at his shirt collar. Swung open the bathroom door and emerged back into the store. Shelves and stacks and a squad of children lined up before the counter like a row of toy soldiers, bored and restless and expectant: a killer combination, and all of it directed straight at him.

“Steve,” crowed Dustin, perking up. “The man of the hour! What’s up?”

“No,” Steve said. Beside him, Robin made a noise that might’ve been a snort. He ignored her. “No more. We agreed last time that it wasn’t ever gonna happen again. Didn’t we?”

“Wait, but you didn’t even see the list!” Dustin thrust a piece of paper at him; Steve batted him away like a mosquito. “Just take a look at it—”

Steve scanned the page as Dustin waved it in front of his face, unimpressed. _“Dawn of the Dead? A Nightmare on Elm Street?_ Are you kidding me?” 

“Uh, _Poltergeist_ is PG, okay, you missed that one—”

“—and we spent so long narrowing down the list, too, you’ve gotta appreciate that—”

“He’s not gonna do it, guys,” Mike Wheeler cut in with a scowl. “We’re wasting our time.” A distant look in his eyes like there was something better waiting for him elsewhere. Steve knew that look; he got it from his sister.

“They’re not even _scary,_ c’mon,” said Max, throwing her hands up in the air. “After everything? Are you serious?”

Steve levelled her a look; Max stared right back at him. He could feel it all slipping out of his grasp anyway. A ball on a court; a shadow in the trees. “Look, I’m not getting fired for you shitheads again,” he began. 

They burst into a cacophony of outrage. “How was that _our_ fault—” 

“—not like _we_ destroyed the mall—”

“—working right overhead a secret spy base, anyway—”

Robin made another noise; it sounded more like a snicker this time. Steve massaged at his temples. “Just give it here,” he said, snatching the paper out of Dustin’s hands. “Fine, whatever, if it’ll get you to go away. But _this_ is the last time, is that clear?”

Instantly they were all angelic again. “Crystal,” Dustin said, grinning toothy and pleased. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down, Steve!”

“Shut it,” Steve grumbled, and headed for the aisles, list in hand. 

There was something persistent pounding in his temple; a dull, familiar ache. That this wasn’t how it was supposed to go, all of it: a bunch of teenagers getting the better of him, days spent handing out false lights and fast colour on film, monsters tearing apart his town from the inside out. He rubbed at his forehead and plucked the titles from their shelves, grimacing down at the covers. Garish red blood and bug-eyed faces. The kids had been right—cheap scares and special effects could hardly fool them now, not when they’d already survived their own horror movie, up close and intimate. They knew the dark better than any story could tell it; that was where they lived, after all. 

Meanwhile Steve had believed seventeen years of the lie, because he was stupid like that. Believed in the difference between up and down, believed in house parties and Prom King and happily ever after and all of it had peeled away from him easy as gift wrap, curtains on a stage revealing the real fear. And all along the truth was the chill of your teeth when you went out into the cold; the shadow of the thing.

“Gotcha,” Steve said absently, sliding the last tape from its spot on the shelf. 

Back at the front counter the kids had already helpfully pooled together all their money. Robin was counting the cash with a very indulgent expression on her face; she was gonna give him so much shit for this later. Steve slammed the stack of tapes down onto the counter and looked the kids in the eye. Realized that he could do it without bending forward very much at all. Just what _were_ they feeding teenagers these days? 

“If this gets out,” Steve said, “you’re dead, you hear me?”

Dustin smiled, very sweet, very patient. The rest of them couldn’t even be bothered to do that. Dustin’d always been his favourite for a reason.

“Loud and clear,” they chorused. It was so cute. Steve almost believed them. 

“When you get fired,” Robin said, finally breaking her generous silence as the kids ran for the door, “I’m not saving your ass again.”

Steve waved a dismissive hand at her. “Oh, please. I’m not _actually_ gonna get fired. How can I? I’m bringing in business.” 

Robin rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. Well, could you try for the slightestbit of discretion next time, if that isn’t too difficult for you to manage? Because I actually _like_ this job for once.”

Steve gestured around them. “Right, ’cause it’s real glamourous, isn’t it—the stale Cheetos smell, the inspired decor, the charming customers—”

“The company,” Robin suggested. A soft punch. She was even smiling. It stopped Steve in his tracks.

“Yeah, okay, I guess it’s not so bad,” he said after a moment, as smooth a landing as he could manage. He smiled back.

The smirk was back on Robin’s face. “I mean, I know you miss your old uniform, but you gotta admit those shorts are hardly appropriate for the weather, or for the eyes of the general public, even.”

Damn it. He’d walked into a setup. “Hey,” Steve said mildly, “I rocked that uniform and you know it.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Robin singsonged.

Sure, the world was a little bigger than you thought it was, a little colder, a little darker. But that ran in the other direction, too; meant it was also a little kinder, a little more interesting than you knew it to be capable of. Turns you’d never expect, and surprises you’d never realize could be waiting for you there, waiting within. Could be the scream or the laugh. Only one way to know; only forward to go.

Outside the kids were fumbling with their bikes. “Race you back to my house,” he could hear Mike holler before he tore down the street, setting off the rest of them like a round of firecrackers, indignant shouts and laughter and all of them going so fast like they were flying. You couldn’t protect anyone from anything, not if they really wanted it. You could only go with them into the dark. “Slow down,” Steve should have called out after them, “you’re going to kill yourselves.” But he didn’t. Just leaned back and watched them go, blur of bright motion colour like they were never gonna stop, never gonna fall, like they were gonna bring this whole dead town right back to life again.


End file.
